Category: From Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Move it –

Sep. 26, 2020 – Exercise became my path to restoring my self-worth, my pride and my identity. I finally felt like myself again, and I’m convinced it saved me from going down a dangerous path. So many people have turned to alcohol or substances to cope with challenging times, and that could easily have been me too.

Having seen the power of exercise bring me back from rock bottom, I’ve made it a personal mission to help others realize the healing power of exercise. Because mental health is such a critical factor in addiction recovery, exercise is becoming a top priority in the way we treat and manage both short- and long-term recovery here at Desert Hope, an American Addiction Centers facility in Las Vegas. And we’re also working to incorporate physical fitness as part of our treatment regimen across our entire network of recovery centers.

Here’s why we’re making exercise a key priority to help patients find and stay on a path of self-care and sobriety. Many of these same benefits apply to anyone struggling with anxiety, depression or other issues that have intensified due to COVID-19 isolation.

• Natural mood booster: It’s well-documented that the hormones released during exercise, including endorphins and serotonin, can enhance mood and alleviate anxiety, fear and depression. This can help to offset symptoms of withdrawal and provide a natural “fix” without the use of substances that cause harm. For this reason, exercise also addresses some of the underlying mental conditions that lead to substance use.

• Improved sleep: Getting adequate sleep can be a huge problem for people in recovery. By fatiguing the body and setting up a healthy cortisol/melatonin cycle, exercise supports the body’s natural circadian rhythm, which can help offset sleep disturbances common during detox, ongoing recovery and for those dealing with mental health issues. If you’re worn out from a great workout, it’s pretty hard to lie awake all night with worry and anxiety.

• Patterns of healthy behavior: Many individuals in recovery need to fill the gap created when they shift away from a lifestyle of substance use. Trading addictive behaviors for exercise establishes a pattern of healthy behavior that has been shown to minimize the risk of relapse and decrease compulsion and cravings.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Rigorous Honesty –

Sep. 25, 2020 – “Eight years into sobriety, I had not done a single shady thing,” he said. “I hadn’t done anything gray.”

At that time in 2012, he had been traveling back and forth to visit his dad, who was undergoing cancer treatment at a hospital. It was around this time that he also suffered a motorcycle accident on his way to the “Parenthood” set. 

“I immediately called my sponsor, and I said, ‘I’m in a ton of pain and I gotta work all day. And we have friends that have Vicodin,’” Shepard recalled. “He said, ‘OK, you can take a couple Vicodin to get through the day of work, but you have to go to the doctor, and you have to get a prescription, and then you have to have Kristen [Bell] dole out the prescription.’” 

Shepard agreed and followed the guidance. However, not long after, he flew back out to see his dad and–because his wife wouldn’t be with him–traveled without the pills.

While there, he ended up giving his ailing father some Percocet. For his part, Shepard said he himself took double what his other prescription was. “You know, we had so little in common and so much f—— friction,” Shepard recalled. “But the no. 1 thing we had in common was we were both f—— addicts and we had never used anything together. And we sat there stoned and looked at the lake. And in that moment, I felt elation and I was just happy.”

Later, Bell surprised him where Shepard was with his dad to offer her support, and Shepard admitted he had relapsed. While she told him he needed to call someone from Alcoholics Anonymous, she knew he had been experiencing a lot of pain from his motorcycle accident and that he’d been dealing with the stress of his dad’s health. 

“That was eight years ago,” Shepard continued, later adding, “I’ve now had this experience where I did that, I felt bad, but there wasn’t any fallout from it. It was like, I felt bad, I said I felt bad, and then I did just move on and it was fine.”

After Shepard got hurt again, he was once again administered pills. However, because they kept him up at night, he decided to save them and take them on his own.

“That cycle happens maybe three or four more times,” he recalled. “I feel shady, but I don’t feel like this is a problem. I didn’t desire more when the thing was over.”

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Makes ya wanna holler –  

Sep. 26, 2020 – “You are out of your mind with worry,” she had said in a phone call from her home in Boston. “And you don’t know where it ends. Well, you do. It ends with death.”

Patty Solomon is a special education teacher and was at school when she got the news. A doctor was on the phone telling her all the things that he had done to save her son.

She had been here before, on the phone with hospitals aiding her son, and in her mind he had been saved and she was already plotting the next step: Getting him out of the hospital and back in rehab.

And then she heard the doctor say: We did everything we could. But it didn’t work.

“I’m devastated,” she said.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Expanding Series and Hope –  

Sep. 23, 2020 – “We’ve come a long way in Georgia since I stepped out of the crack house October 12, 1994 in terms of resources,” he said. “We’ve come a long way as far as stigma and public understanding, but we’ve got a long way to go.”  

Emory Psychiatrist, Dr. Justine Welsh, said now, it’s more important than ever to have the Alliance during this pandemic.

“I’m seeing an escalation in alcohol use, and cannabis, and opioids, and stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine,” Welsh listed Overdoses are up, too, experts said. Emergency room visits from overdoses from December of 2019 to April of 2020 were up 17 percent – and that just tracks the first few months of the pandemic. 

“And we expect those numbers to continue to go up,” Welsh added. 

Welsh said the Addiction Alliance of Georgia aims to fill in the gaps to support as many Georgians as they can.

“Addiction is an illness that doesn’t discriminate and recovery shouldn’t discriminate either,” Moyers agreed.

The Alliance has a goal of increasing clinical services, research and education, and even developing programs for school-aged children to teach them about addiction and decrease the stigma of getting help.

“Not just to people with insurance, not just to people with jobs, but for all people who need help and healing,” Moyers said. 

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Traditions – 

Sep. 17, 2020 – People rarely, if ever, get sober alone. In sobriety and in business, being part of a group allows you to benefit from the experience, strength and the hope of those around you.

2. What other people think of you is none of your business

As a young advisor, I focused on what I should do and was consumed with what others might think of me. Older people made suggestions about where I should live, how I should dress and where I should go to be seen.

I took their advice but ended up feeling incredibly inauthentic and unhappy.

As I continued in my sobriety, letting go of what others might think reinforced the importance of my job as a planner — to help clients discern and live their dreams rather than living out some idea influenced by what their parents did or what their friends planned to do.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Intriguing –

Sept. 13, 2020 – “Along the way, through each and every one of those mergers and acquisitions, the organization has gotten stronger, has provided a better level of care and we’re able to respond to community needs in a better way,” he said. “We’re able to do more with scale than we would otherwise be able to do.”

Organizations like The Centers and SMA rely largely on funding from the state. Private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare only cover a small portion of services, Norman said.

“Florida, in the nation, sits at 49th in mental health and substance abuse funding. It should be an embarrassment. The only reason we can’t get to 50 is that there is a state out there that gives nothing,” Norman said.

Baracskay took over the agency soon after an aborted attempt to transform itself into a combined mental and primary healthcare organization. The CEO then, Tim Cowart, wanted to offer primary healthcare services to increase the agency’s revenue.

The Centers’ board, in moving away from the effort, felt it distracted from the founding goal of providing mental health and substance abuse programs.

Founded in 1972 as Marion-Citrus Mental Health Center, mental health treatment remains central to the organization’s mission.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Soulless Screens? –

Sept. 14, 2020 – Amid the global pandemic, group gatherings have become nearly impossible. Weddings have been put on hold indefinitely, schools are turning to virtual learning and offices are encouraging employees to work from home until it’s safe to be in close proximity.

Though everyone has been impacted in some way by the new restrictions put in place due to COVID-19, people struggling with addiction have had it especially hard in quarantine. Social isolation, economic despair and a global health crisis have made COVID-19 “the perform storm” for individuals with substance use disorders — and on top of all that, normal outlets like group meetings and therapy no longer exist in the traditional sense because meeting face-to-face is now dangerous.

With nowhere else to go, people living with addiction are turning to online resources like virtual support groups and Zoom therapy until things return to normal. And because of the pandemic, there are far more online resources to leverage: According to a recent study from the University of Michigan Addiction Center, policy shifts have made it much easier for addiction care specialists to pivot to telemedicine.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Sixxed to the twelve steps – 

Sept. 15, 2020 – But then again, there was a time when people wouldn’t have expected Sixx, now age 61, to even be alive in 2020. As chronicled in his harrowing memoir The Heroin Diaries, the band autobiography and Netflix film adaptation The Dirt, and VH1’s Behind the Music, Sixx overdosed on heroin multiple times in the ‘80s — most famously on Dec. 23, 1987, when he was declared clinically dead for two minutes before being revived. But now that Sixx has been clean for nearly 20 years now, he has made it his mission to help other addicts, even if there are some Crüe fans out there who don’t think sobriety is very “cool.” 

Sixx’s latest endeavor, with his other band Sixx:A.M., is the all-star Artists for Recovery charity single “Maybe It’s Time,” which features Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, Slash, country star Brantley Gilbert, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour,  Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan Moody, AWOLNATION, and Bad Wolves’ Tommy Vext. The song is part of an initiative to draw attention to the opioid crisis and raise funds for the recovery community, timed with National Recovery Month; all artist royalties from the song will go to the Global Recovery Initiatives Foundation (GRI), with a matching contribution from Better Noise Music. The song is also featured on the soundtrack for Better Noise Films’ Sno Babies, a raw depiction of teenage drug addiction in a seemingly picturesque suburban town.

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – The little ones left behind –

Sep. 14, 2020 – Both men were into racing so the Schultz family hopes these t-shirts in his memory alert others to the danger of street drugs laced with fentanyl.

“I hope they raise awareness for what fentanyl can do for anybody and obviously to raise money for her 3-year-old daughter to help her later in life,” Tanner’s mother, Marcia Leonard, said. 

The shirts say, “Life is not about winning the race. It’s about finishing the race.”

The family has raised more than $1,300 for Sophia’s college fund. 

If you’d like to buy a t-shirt for $15 to help out, you can email Leonard at: [email protected]

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Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Encouragement in Life – 

Sep. 15, 2020 – Each poem is a testimony of the author’s strength and hope as he overcomes his experiences. Ultimately, the book offers readers inspiration and motivation to deal with the real life issues that they are going through, all while cleverly adding a poetic twist to each and every poem title.

“I would like my readers to know that it’s okay to feel whatever you want,” Hunter states. “I want them to know that they are not alone because there is at least one other person that’s feeling the same way. Finally, I want my readers to know that no matter how bad it gets there is a solution for making the best out any negative situation.

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